Politicians have taken to social media of late. President, Barack Obama of course took the use of social media to a next generation use level. We now have Tweeting Governors, You Tube politicians, we have Facebook being used by local and national political operations. The staffers on Capital Hill for members of Congress, in State Houses, County and City learder nationwide want to learn more about social media. The use of social media as primarily been used for PR if its being used at all.

Social media must be about more than just PR – they must utilize it to help get things done. Currently this is not being done.

There are changes coming, The National Journal plans to launch a social network that is exclusive to house.gov and senate.gov, email addresses to improve collaboration among Capital Hill employees and staffers. This site will be similar in functionality to Facebook and LinedIn

While this is an excellent use of social media by politicians and their staffers, it is clearly internally focused. Politicians serve as represenatives of the people that voted them into office. I believe it is equally important to use social media as an externally focused, collaboration and get things done tool for politicians and the people they serve.

What a great idea people/voters working together with politicains to get things done, making government work, while turning casual, social network site visitors into passionate supporters. …….our forefathers would be very proud of social media’s contribution to making government more for the people and by the people.

About the Author ….Jacob R Miles III, Founder and CEO of GrapevineStar™ Entertainment Inc., a next generation media and entertainment company that develops and represents content for TV, Film, Internet, Publishing and Licensing. He is also co-founder with Scott Monaco and Senior Consultant for Social Media Analysts™, a social media consultancy, research firm and content publisher that operates a network of niche social networks. He has held various senior level engineering and operations positions with Toy, Entertainment, Internet and TV broadcasting companies, He currently resides in Grapevine, Texas (Dallas-Ft Worth)